Read Range

Read Range reads a block of cells from a sheet and gives you their values and their formulas as JSON. Use it to bring data from an uploaded spreadsheet into your process.

Add the action

In the Process Designer toolbox, open Excel and pick Read Range (or type Read Range in the search box).

The Read Range action properties: Excel workbook, Sheet name, Range, Values and Formulas

Inputs and outputs

Field	Direction	Type	Required	What to put / what you get
Excel workbook	Input	File	Yes	An `.xlsx` or `.xlsm` workbook.
Sheet name	Input	Text	Yes	The sheet to read.
Range	Input	Text	Yes	The cells to read, as `A1:D10` (upper-case column letters, start and end cell).
Values	Output	Object (JSON)	No	The cell values.
Formulas	Output	Object (JSON)	No	The formulas, with the same shape as Values. A cell without a formula gives `null`.

The shape of the result

The shape depends on the range you read:

Range	Shape of Values	Example
Several rows and columns	A list of rows; each row is an object keyed by column letter	`[{"A":"Product","B":"Qty"},{"A":"Pen","B":2}]`
One row	One object keyed by column letter	`{"B":2,"C":1.5,"D":3}`
One column	A list of values	`["Pen","Book","Mug"]`

Example

Sheet Orders:

	A	B	C	D
1	Product	Qty	Price	Total
2	Pen	2	1.5	=B2*C2 (shows 3)
3	Book	1	12	=B3*C3 (shows 12)

Range A1:D3 →

Values

[
  { "A": "Product", "B": "Qty", "C": "Price", "D": "Total" },
  { "A": "Pen", "B": 2, "C": 1.5, "D": 3 },
  { "A": "Book", "B": 1, "C": 12, "D": 12 }
]

Formulas

[
  { "A": null, "B": null, "C": null, "D": null },
  { "A": null, "B": null, "C": null, "D": "B2*C2" },
  { "A": null, "B": null, "C": null, "D": "B3*C3" }
]

Case	Result
Range `C3` (one cell, no colon)	The step fails: "Invalid range: Bad format, please use [col][row]:[col][row] formatting." Write `C3:C3`.
Sheet name `Nope`	The step fails: "Sheet not found: Nope"

Good to know

Whole numbers come back as integers, decimals as numbers, TRUE/FALSE as true/false, everything else as text. Empty cells come back as "".
For a formula cell, Values holds the result that was last saved in the file. The action does not recalculate, so a workbook changed by Apply Formula can show old or empty results until it is opened and saved in Excel.
Dates come back as Excel serial numbers (for example 45296). Convert them with Parse OLE Date.
Formulas are returned without the leading =.
The range must use upper-case letters and include both ends: a1:b2 and A1 are refused.
To read a .csv file the same way, use Read Range from CSV. To find how far the data goes, use Get Last Used Row.

Read Range from CSV, Get Last Used Row, Get Named Range, Parse OLE Date